Teaching Their Omega novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Morning After

The farmhouse kitchen was warm and yellow, and the coffee smelled like the first honest thing in a week.

I sat on the counter by the sink in Rhett's flannel shirt with my legs hanging down, a mug in both hands.

And a body that felt scrubbed hollow and new.

Patsy had texted at dawn.

Her heat had broken too, and her two friends had taken turns sleeping on the classroom floor.

And she wanted me to know she had eaten a whole pie.

I had laughed until my ribs hurt.

Declan came in from the back hall carrying a shoebox.

He set it on the table, and took out a black notebook, and another, and another, until there were nine of them in a row.

"Every encounter of my life," he said. "I told you."

"You did."

"This one is different."

He opened the oldest one, its cover cracked white at the spine, and turned it to face me.

The writing inside was a child's, in pencil, careful and crooked.

Sat. 2h 04m. Reset 3x. Twitched at 1h 10. Reset. Reset.

The next page said, Sat. 2h 00m. No reset. Dad shook my hand.

"I started writing it down when I was ten," Declan said. "It was the only part I could control."

"Dec," Rhett said from the stove, very quietly.

"I never showed you."

"I know."

"Osmund kept his own," Declan said. "A green ledger, with a ribbon."

"Every Saturday, the times, our names, our heart rates when he thought he could tell."

"He wrote it in ink. I watched him do it from the floor."

I set my mug down.

"What did he do with it?"

"He put it in the Handbook. Chapter Nine. 'Restraint in the Young Alpha: A Study.' The numbers are ours. The cases are us."

"He published you."

"He published our worst Saturdays without our names. And the valley has taught it as science for twenty years."

It was very quiet in the kitchen.

Rhett turned off the burner and came and stood at my knee.

His face was stripped bare, no grin, nothing in it but his eyes.

"I didn't know the ledger was real," he said. "I thought it was only a book."

"It was real."

"They aren't going to place you, Lowen." He put his hand flat on the counter beside my thigh.

"I'm telling you now, because you're going to start worrying about the hearing, and I don't want you to spend one more hour worrying."

"Nobody is sending you anywhere. If they come for you, they come through me."

"And me," said Declan.

"I know," I said.

I was crying a little, which I had not planned.

I put my hand on Declan's cheek.

"Thank you for telling me."

"I thought it would feel like dying."

"Does it?"

"No." He turned his face into my palm. "It feels like putting something down."

I looked at the two of them, tall and ruined and trying.

And the wanting came up in me clear and calm, with none of the heat's roar in it.

This was just me.

"Come here," I said. "Both of you."

"I'm not tired. I'm not in heat. I'm just me, and I want you, and I want it slow. Come here."

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend